Independent Evaluation Office

Popular Content

Salt Lake City, Utah:
Today, Republican state legislator
Norman Thurston
introduced groundbreaking
legislation
to create a safe, state-run prescription drug importation program that would import high-cost drugs from Canada, where prescription drugs cost 30 percent than in the United States.

Salt Lake City, Utah:

The proposal for a whole-sale importation program of select, higher-cost drugs that are already licensed for sale in Canada would be among the first in the nation and promises to generate significant cost savings for the state of Utah and its consumers. The Utah bill closely follows
model legislation
developed by the National Academy for State Health Policy (
air jordan number quiz
), a nonpartisan group that works closely with state policymakers to develop state legislative and regulatory strategies to rein in pharmaceutical costs.

For more than a decade, Thurston, a respected health care advocate and member of NASHP’s
Pharmacy Cost Work Group
, has worked tirelessly to reduce state spending on prescription drugs. Aware of his “red” state’s concerns about regulations and the complexity of drug price transparency legislation implemented in other states, Thurston took a different approach to rein in drug costs by proposing drug importation.

“Utah will control which drugs are imported and will monitor this program so the savings make it all the way down to consumers when they fill prescriptions,” said Thurston. “The State of Utah pays for drug benefits for a quarter of its population, including state and local governmentemployees and retirees, teachers, and Medicaid enrollees. At some point, we need to ask ourselves, ‘as a major drug purchaser,why aren’t we getting a better deal?’ Other major purchasers such as Canada and Europe get a much better deal than us.”

“The time is right for a well-run state importation program, considering the US drug market already relies heavily on pharmaceutical drug importation,” observed NASHP Executive Director Trish Riley. Currently:

“Consumers continue to be outraged by the price of necessary prescription drugs, and the federal government has not acted to stem the cost of drugs,” noted Riley. “States can be great laboratories for innovation and this is a great opportunity for Utah to be a national leader and develop new approaches that can be adopted by other states and ultimately by the federal government.”